In OFDMA systems such as the LTE system, in general the number of cell specific antenna ports of the serving cell is implicitly signaled to the UE via the Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) cyclic redundancy check (CRC) mask, as defined in the third generation partnership project (3GPP) technical specification 36.212. However, to successfully receive the PBCH, the UE needs to determine the number of cell-specific antenna ports. Since the information adds to the number of cell-specific antenna ports can only be known to the UE via a successful confirmation of a CRC check sum on PBCH data, an unresolvable circular problem exists.
One way to circumvent this problem is to perform a series of hypothesis testing by repeatedly attempting to receive the PBCH based on different assumptions about the number of cell-specific antenna ports. If the hypothesis testings are done sequentially, the latency in the communication may exceed desired limits. If the hypothesis testings are done in parallel though, then additional signal processing modules are required, resulting in an increased chip size and excessive power consumption.